Kirby: The Animation
|image = |descr = The show's logo.|creator = CaptainCat13|producer = Alpaca Studios|broadcaster = Cartoon Network|type = Anime|genre = Fantasy, Action, Adventure, Comedy|cast = Makiko Ohmoto, Kenichi Ogata, Atsushi Kisaichi|seasons = TBA|runtime = 22 Minutes}} Kirby: The Animation (Also stylized as Kirby the Animation) is a Japanese animated TV show based around the [[Kirby (series)| Kirby]] series of video games. The show is produced by Alpaca Studios, under the supervision of HAL Laboratories and the series' creator, Masahiro Sakurai. The show follows Kirby's adventures, as to be expected, as he battles evil to protect the planet known as Popstar. The show mainly adapts the games in the series for its story arcs, putting them together into one larger storyline, going from the beginning of the series (Kirby's Dream Land) all the way to the more recent titles (Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot) The show began regularly airing on Fridays in Spring 2018, being broadcast on Cartoon Network, and continues along with the game series. Characters & Cast Main Others Plot This section will be divided into the different seasons and the arcs that make up their overall plots. Season 1 The story begins with King Dedede stealing all of Dream Land's food from the people, which he calls "tax collecting" to try and hide his evil deeds, but Kirby sees this injustice and rises from his comfortable bed to get payback for the people of Dream Land, by traveling to Dedede's castle and facing the king himself. Kirby goes through a forest, where he battles a sentient tree called Whispy Woods, and then passes by Castle Lololo, where he faces the twins, Lololo and Lalala. High in the skies of Popstar, Kirby battles the airship, Kabula, and the living cloud, Kracko, before he finally arrives at Castle Dedede. Faced with a massive gate, Kirby steps inside and falls into a trap door, taking him to a wrestling ring, where Dedede is awaiting him for their big showdown. Kirby manages to take down King Dedede and takes all the food back to the people below, leaving a small handful for Dedede, out of kindness. While on a trip aboard his Warp Star with his newfound animal buddies, Rick, Kine and Coo, Kirby sees that the Rainbow Islands are no longer connected by the rainbow bridges, he presumes that the evil Dedede is behind this once more and lands on the Big Forest island, where the four of them are cornered by the monsters that lived there, those being Jumpershoot, Efreeti and Blocky, but they are all easily defeated. Kirby and pals find a clearing where they battle Nruff, a hairy creature looking to defend its babies. Nruff is beaten and that allowed the group to proceed to the other islands, Ripple Field, the Red Canyon and the Iceberg. With their big fight ahead of them, Kirby decides it would be safer for his animal friends to stay back as he fought Dedede alone. Atop the Dark Castle, Kirby faces off against King Dedede again, only this time, upon defeat, a dark energy comes out of him and flies into the black clouds above, but with the power of the rainbows, Kirby wields the Rainbow Sword to go out and defeat this creature, known as Dark Matter. Upon destroying Dark Matter, its energy scatters into space and the Rainbow Sword breaks back up into the bridges, leaving Kirby to float back down to meet his friends and go home. After Kirby finishes off Dark Matter, he tries to sleep but has no dreams, he is then told by Coo that the Star Rod was broken, making it so that nobody ever had dreams in Popstar again, so he has to set off to rebuild the Star Rod, facing off against Whipsy Woods, Paint Roller, the Heavy Mole and the mysterious Meta Knight, sending his forces against Kirby before facing him on his own for the last piece of the Star Rod. With the Star Rod fixed, Kirby fights King Dedede at the Fountain of Dreams, defeating the king for the third time, and allowing him to put the Star Rod back in its place. However, that unleashes an orb with a star pattern, Nightmare, whom Kirby must battle with the power of the Star Rod, eventually taking their duel to the moon as Nightmare reveals his true form. Kirby uses the Star Rod's power to destroy Nightmare (and part of Popstar's moon) and is able to go back and finally have a nice dream. Meanwhile, dark energy approaches Popstar from the depths of space, followed by one massive blob with what seems to be a red eye. More TBA List of Episodes So far, the show has a single season, with a second one in the works. Below is the listing of each episode of Kirby: The Animation Copy Abilities A signature ability of Kirby's is copying his enemies' powers by eating them, and despite this not being present in the first Dream Land game, Kirby is able to copy in the first arc, based on that game. Season 1 *'Episode 3:' The Fire ability is used as Kirby's guiding light through the halls of Castle Lololo. *'Episode 4:' The same Fire ability is used against Lololo and Lalala in Kirby's fight against them. *'Episode 6:' Kirby gains the Sword ability and uses it to cut up Kabula's balloon, destroying the airship. *'Episode 8:' During the fight with Kracko, Kirby uses the Beam ability against the cloud monster, and takes it with him into Castle Dedede. *'Episode 9:' Dedede outright gives Kirby the Hammer ability for them to fight on equal grounds, like in Super Star Ultra's "Revenge of the King" *'Episode 11:' Kirby defeats Jumpershoot to take the Parasol ability and proceeds to defeat Blocky to use the Rock ability against Efreeti. *'Episode 13:' In the battle with Sweet Stuff, Kirby accidentally freezes the water with the Ice ability, giving them a time limit in their fight. *'Episode 15:' Spark Kirby teams up with Coo to take down Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright in the skies of the Red Canyon. *'Episode 16:' In order to not feel so cold in the Iceberg, Kirby acquires the Ice ability, giving him a cute hoodie to be warm in. *'Episode 17:' Kirby tries to use the Ice ability against the Ice Dragon, only to have to ditch it. *'Episode 19:' For the battle with Dark Matter, Kirby makes use of the Rainbow Sword, much like in the game. *'Episode 23:' Kirby defeats Paint Roller with the Paint ability, taken from the painter's own bucket. *'Episode 24:' The Light ability is used to, well, light the dark tunnels Heavy Mole left behind. *'Episode 25:' In the Heavy Mole fight, Kirbby makes use of the Hammer ability, only seen previously in the first battle with Dedede. Differences from the Games Due to being adaptations of video games, the arcs will change certain things for them to be more viable than in a platformer world, or to have better continuity with later games' arcs. Season 1 Click "Expand" to see the list. *Kirby's dome-shaped house is shown from the beginning, despite only appearing in the series later on. *All of Kirby's copy abilities use their updated, modern designs rather than just being represented by different colors. **The only exception is the Ice ability, which uses its Freeze design from Nightmare in Dream Land and Air Ride. **The Light ability never had a revamped design, so it was made to be Kirby with a lightbulb on his head. *Lololo and Lalala are both fought at Castle Lololo, instead of being separated at first. *Kabula was originally fought with the Mint Leaf power-up, but as it's not present here, the airship is fought in two different ways (Warp Star and later Bronto Burt + Sword ability) *Kracko appears in his full form from the start and doesn't just summon enemies to fight, he actually has a small army of them. *The way Kirby meets up with Dedede for their showdown is completely different. *Rather than Dedede being flung out of his castle and Kirby becoming a balloon, Dedede is left defeated in his castle while Kirby and the Waddle Dees take the food back down. *The first arc in general is more akin to Kirby Super Star's Spring Breeze game than the original Kirby's Dream Land, although they are mainly the same. *After Kirby's duel with Dedede, the subsequent Dream Land 2 arc is foreshadowed with Dark Matter descending from space, when nothing of the sort happened in the original game. *2 of the Rainbow Islands are cut from the Dream Land 2 arc, due to not having unique bosses in the original (Whispy Woods in Grass Land and Kracko in Cloudy Park) *Blocky has his modern Triple Deluxe design rather than the original, simpler design. *The Ice Dragon and Mr. Shine & Mr. Bright are fought in reverse order, with the latter coming first. *Kirby's animal buddies are with him at all times, except for his final duel with Dedede and Dark Matter. *The events of Kirby's Adventure happen after Dream Land 2 in this game, meaning the animal buddies make appearances in this arc (although they are relatively smaller) **One example is that Coo the owl is the one to give Kirby the news about the Fountain of Dreams. **In the very next episode, Kirby fights Whispy Woods alongside Rick the hamster. **Kine is used by Kirby to go to Ice Cream Island. *Ice Cream Island is themed around art rather than just being a tropical paradise type place. *Much like with the Dream Land 2 arc, areas in the Adventure arc were cut from the anime, to make the journey shorter and a bit more seamless. *''More TBA'' Trivia *CaptainCat had the idea to make a new Kirby anime during a conversation about the original Kirby: Right Back at Ya anime, where he claimed it would be great to have a Kirby anime by a big animation company and that had game-based story arcs. *The idea of story arcs based on games is somewhat inspired by Sonic X, which had arcs about the two Sonic Adventure games. *Much like in the original anime, Right Back at Ya, the Fire ability is the first to be shown in use. *In Kirby's fight with Kabula, his idea to use a Bronto Burt to fly after the air fortress is a reference to Kirby 64, as Bronto Burts could be held up and used to fly. *Some voice actors featured in the show also worked on other popular anime and media, for example, the trio of Rick, Kine and Coo were voiced by the people who did Principal Nezu, Minoru Mineta and Shoto Todoroki in My Hero Academia, respectively. Category:Kirby (series) Category:Anime Category:Animated Series